SEXPLOITATION – Chatterbox

Published on: 20th December, 2009

SEXPLOITATION - Chatterbox  | read this item

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The 1970s was an intense and creative period for the film industry. A new generation of filmmakers such as Francis Ford Coppola and Martin Scorcese were producing brutal-yet-acclaimed work, whilst the drive-ins and movie theatres were awash with sleazy and ultra-violent exploitation, from the rape/revenge cycle (The Last House on the Left, I Spit on Your Grave) to an array of low budget horrors (The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, The Hills Have Eyes). The adult film industry had also begun to break through into the mainstream, with Jerry Gerard’s Deep Throat and Just Jaeckin’s Emmanuelle becoming box office sensations, whilst stars like Marilyn Chambers were also cast in non-adult feature films. Whilst many of these softcore movies were relatively generic and only sold on their sexual aspect, there were a few that offered enough unique ideas to guarantee some level of cult status. One of these was Chatterbox.

Director Tom DeSimone was ten-years old when he first fell in love with cinema, having contracted rheumatic fever and remained bedridden for many months. His father had purchased a film projector in an effort to keep the young boy entertained and so DeSimone would watch countless feature films and animations. He soon began making his own 8mm shorts with family and friends, using small models as cheap special effects. After studying drama at Emerson College, DeSimone enrolled at UCLA where, during his junior year, he shot the award-winning short Wooden Lullaby. By the time he had graduated from film school he had won a scholarship for his next effort, The Game, and soon found work supervising post-production for a Los Angeles company called Bosustow Productions. Although he worked primarily as an editor, DeSimone continued to work on his own short films, resulting in One Special Dog.

After two years, DeSimone left Bosustow and formed his own production company. He soon found work in the adult industry shooting various softcore features under the alias Lancer Brooks. These obscure productions included such dubious titles as How to Make a Homo Movie, Confessions of a Male Groupie, Prison Girls and Swap Meat. Whilst his adult offerings were finding an audience of sorts, DeSimone knew that if he were to make a successful career as a filmmaker then he would have to produce something that had a more commercial appeal. Unsure of what avenue to take, DeSimone’s luck changed one New Year’s Eve when he attended a party and made the acquaintance of an up-and-coming producer.

Bruce Cohn Curtis had come from a family with a rich cinematic history. His grandfather, Jack Cohn, and great uncle, Harry Cohn, had become major players in Hollywood in the 1920s after forming Columbia Pictures with Joe Brandt. Having come to the forefront of the movie industry with regular stars like Cary Grant and Rita Hayworth, the studio would become one of the most successful in America. Perhaps it was inevitable that Curtis would eventually follow in their footsteps, making his debut as producer with the 1968 feature Otley. Other credits soon followed, including The Raging Moon and Born Innocent, the latter of which starred a young Linda Blair (fresh from her success in The Exorcist) as a teenage girl who is sent to a borstal and is forced to fight back against the brutality of both inmates and guards. This project would start a collaborative relationship between Curtis and Blair that would later continue with Hell Night in 1981, which would serve as DeSimone’s breakthrough movie.

Curtis became intrigued by a story that DeSimone had pitched to him called Lips, in which a beautiful young woman develops a talking vagina. Whilst it could be a difficult sell and a challenge to create, the pair knew that they had a winner on their hands and immediately set out to find a writer to adapt the premise into a full screenplay. Norman Yonemoto had recently wrote and directed a film called Garage Sale and seemed the ideal choice to flesh out the concept (incidentally, Yonemoto would later write the exploitation flick Savage Streets, which would co-star Blair and DeSimone’s brother, Bob). To assist with the writing of the script, Curtis also hired Mark Rosin, whose only prior credit had been developing the story for the 1976 feature The Great Texas Dynamite Chase.

The success of the movie, however, would rely on being able to find an actress who would be willing to work with the material and have her vagina as the focal point of the story. Twenty-four year old Candice Rialson’s first role had been an uncredited appearance in the 1969 flick The Gay Deceivers, but soon minor parts in various Roger Corman productions like Candy Stripe Nurses and Summer School Teachers, before Mama’s Dirty Girls led to her breakthrough role as wannabe actress Candy in the 1976 feature Hollywood Boulevard, which would mark the directorial debut of Joe Dante (later of The Howling and Gremlins fame). Having received modest acclaim for her performance, Rialson would continue to work on bit parts or uncredited parts in the likes of Mel Brooks’ spoof Silent Movie and the cult flick Logan’s Run. But her first starring role would come as Penny in Lips, which the filmmakers would eventually re-title as Chatterbox.

As Penny’s boyfriend, Ted, who is labelled sexually inadequate by her nether regions during the opening scene, a relatively inexperienced young actor called Perry Bullington was cast. Having only previously appeared in an episode of Marcus Welby, M.D. in 1974, Bullington would eventually abandon acting in favour of working as a casting director on such ’80s flicks as American Ninja and Invaders from Mars, before cult producer Charles Band hired him to cast many of his features (including Crash and Burn, Puppet Master II and Demonic Toys). For the role of Penny’s psychiatrist, Dr. Pearl, who upon discovering her secret transforms her into media sensation, television regular Larry Gelman was brought onboard. Having made guest appearances in such shows as Mission: Impossible, The Monkees and Batman during the 1960s, Gelman landed the recurring role of Dr. Bernie Tupperman on The Bob Newhart Show.

The supporting cast would include Jane Kean, who had launched the comedy duo Betty & Jane Kean with her sister, Betty. With her husband, Joe Hecht, balancing his own acting career with managing that of his wife’s (his occasional roles would include Eight Is Enough and Dallas), Kean had previously appeared in the likes of Days of Our Lives, The Jackie Gleason Show (which had won her minor acclaim) and the TV movie The Honeymooners Second Honeymoon. Much like Gelman, Robert Lipton was also a veteran of television during the 1960s and ’70s (and, like Bullington, had appeared on Marcus Welby, M.D.). One cult star amongst the credits was Rip Taylor, an offbeat and flamboyant comedian who had first shot to fame on Ed Sullivan’s Toast of the Town during the mid ’60s. His various roles and cameos over the years have included The Happy Hooker Goes to Washington, Home Alone 2: Lost in New York, Wayne’s World 2, The Addams Family (in which he played Uncle Fester on one of the TV shows) and both Jackass movies. Former stand-up comedian – and brother of the director – Bob DeSimone would also make an appearance as Mr. Meeker.

The task of shooting Chatterbox for DeSimone fell to Tak Fujimoto, who had first come to the attention of Hollywood after his work on the classic Badlands. Following on from such ’70s exploitation as Caged Heat, Death Race 2000 and Cannonball, Fujimoto later found success with the likes of Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, Cocoon: The Return, Philadelphia and The Sixth Sense. One of DeSimone’s assistant directors was future filmmaker Chuck Russell, who would later work as executive producer on Hell Night before launching his own career as a director with A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors, The Blob and the Jim Carrey smash hit The Mask. The editing chores would fall to William Martin, who had previously cut episodes of Planet of the Apes and The Mark of Zorro before moving onto the cult shows like Buck Rogers in the 25th Century and Knight Rider.

The final piece of the puzzle came during post-production when the filmmakers searched for a suitable composer to score the music. The most unlikely of choices came with Neil Sedaka, who had become a successful songwriter in the late 1950s before launching his singing career. With all the pieces in place, Chatterbox was released theatrically in February 1977 by American International Pictures (AIP) and became a surprise success. Several years later it had a new lease of life on VHS courtesy of Vestron Video, before eventually slipping into obscurity. Whilst DeSimone’s next commercial feature. Hell Night, would become a regular fixture of the slasher genre, Chatterbox became something of a cult oddity and a collector’s item, with copies of the VHS going for ridiculous prices on eBay. At present, the movie is unavailable on DVD and has yet to be rediscovered.

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